I am an Addict. There I have said it! I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol or cigarettes. I am addicted to online games! Always have been, always will be. It started way back with Tetris, Bejeweled and Mario Brothers. Then I participated in the Farmville and Candy Crush craze. Now I play a combination of games that keep my brain thinking or my mind stress free. My current favorites are Words with Friends, 7 Little Words, Trivia Crack, Lumosity and Monkey Wrench, which I try to play on a daily basis. Most of these give me more than a couple of days to play their daily puzzle, so I often catch up on the weekend. I also play Red Herring, get bored with it, then go back to it. And when I have a little extra time and need to not use my brain, my go to games are SongPop 2 and Match the Dots.

Also note that I do not pay for any games. I play the daily puzzles which are free and I put up with the ads.

Words with Friends – Zynga – The game is just like its name! You challenge a friend (or an unknown person) to a game that is similar to the classic board game Scrabble. There is lots of strategy as you try to get the most points each turn with your 7 letters, BUT try to make sure you don’t set your challenger up for a good score. You have up to 11 days for your turn so there is not a lot of pressure. I play with 4 friends right now; two I play with every day or two, and the other two is sporadic.

7 Little Words – Blue Ox Technologies – This game is a daily game and each puzzle is available for 3 days. You have to unscramble tiles that have 2, 3 or 4 letters on them and make 7 words. There are clues for each word and it gets easier as you get each word, as there are less tiles to work with. I find that I can usually get at least 4 words at the first seating, then I play again later and find that some of the other words just pop out at me. Somedays I never finish. Mondays are the easiest puzzles and they get harder through the week. My favorite day is Sunday when they have “themed” puzzles. Like other games I played this for a long time, got tired of it, stopped, and started up again when I taught my sister how to play.

Trivia Crack – Etermax – This is one of my newer games and I play individual games against my two sisters and an Alabama “online friend” I found through SongPop. It is very straight forward and easy to learn. There are 6 categories: Geography, Sports, History, Art, Science and Entertainment. You spin the dial and get a category and a question with 4 answers. You answer it right and you get another spin. You answer it wrong and it is your opponent’s turn. You get 3 answers right in a row and you have the opportunity to get a Crown. To win the game you must have 6 Crowns, a Crown from each category. And therein lies the problem…..I am good at Sports and Geography, but awful at Entertainment! Another facet of the game is that you can see your overall percentages of correct answers per category.

Lumosity – Lumosity falls in the category of brain games. If you play the free Lumosity you will get 3 puzzles a day, and you can play them once, or have access to them all day long. Then the next day you will get 3 entirely different puzzles. You have no control over what puzzles show up each day. I think I have access to about 20 puzzles. Some I absolutely love, and others are not as interesting, but overall I think it is a good workout. The puzzles are in the following categories: speed, memory, attention, flexibility and problem solving. My favorite is “Trouble Brewing” where you quickly take multiple coffee orders, pour the coffee, AND make sure that the coffee doesn’t spill before you get back to that cup again. Another fun puzzle is “Train of Thought”. There are colored trains and colored stations and you have to get the same colored train into the same colored station. Sound easy? Not really when there are 10 different colored trains coming out of the tunnel and you have to constantly change the tracks to get the train to the correct station. And oh by the way the trains keep coming and never stop! The puzzles start out easy and over the weeks as you progress through many levels the tasks become harder. (for example I think the train puzzle might start with 4 trains, you master that, then you get 5 trains, etc) I have not tried it but I have heard good reviews of the brain game called Elevate.

Monkey Wrench – Blue Ox Technologies – Okay Okay I know what you are thinking…….what kind of name is this? Well the monkey icon showed up on the bottom of my 7 Little Words game every day for ages, taunting me…..saying Gale Gale please play me. I finally caved to the monkey and tried it. And guess what? It’s mildly interesting. It’s a word search puzzle (hard to explain in this limited space), you play by yourself, you have one puzzle a day and three days to play. Fun to play when you have 5 minutes until dinner is ready.

SongPop 2 – Fresh Planet – This is a fun, nostalgic, stress releasing, relaxing, music trivia game. I mostly play with people I don’t know as they try to match your common music interests. The playlists are from dozens of genres and lots of decades. I seem to do best in the 60’s and 70’s, Pop and Rock (those were my teenage years and my twenties). The modern songs I am pretty good at are the Country songs. Obviously my music tastes have changed over the years. To play the game you hear a song and then you have 4 answers to choose from, either 4 singer names, or 4 titles of the song. You hear 5 songs a round and you have to answer faster and get more correct than your opponent. I usually just play on the weekends, as the games never expire. There are two women that I was matched up to about 2 or 3 years ago who I still play with. SongPop used to assign you geographically and I was in Florida at the time. One woman is from Alabama and I am now on Facebook with her, and follow the pictures of her grandchildren. The other woman winters in Florida and lives in Ohio the rest of the year. We got chatting (on line) and it turns out she lives near Mansfield, Ohio where my sister lives, and her husband knows my brother-in-law. What a small world!

Match the Dots – IceMochi – Totally mindless. You can play a quick game in a minute. Connect the same colored dots. There are timed games where speed is important, and other games where you are given so many moves to get a task done. Depending on how fast, or how few moves you take you get 1, 2 or 3 stars. Often if I only get 1 star I play that particular game again and again to improve to 2 or 3 stars.

Red Herring – Blue Ox Technologies – This game exasperates me! That’s why I can’t play it all the time. I’ll play a few games, then not play for weeks, then go back to it. It is challenging and interesting, sometimes easy, but most of the time difficult. The goal of the game is to group 4 words into 3 categories, but you don’t know the names of the categories. You have a total of 16 words, so 4 words are not used. Watch out for them as they are the Red Herrings that are there to mislead you. Start with the hardest level first, then drop to normal and easy as necessary. As with the other Blue Ox games there is a new game every day and they last for three days.

So these are my favorites right now. If I was to rewrite this blog next January, some of these games will be a memory, and there will be a few new ones to add to the list. What are your favorite games? You know I am always looking for good reviews and new games to try.

About the Author – Gale enjoys her “down time” with online games. But she is most interested in working with both Sellers and Buyers and helping them reach their goals. Gale Spadafora is one of the Broker Owners at RE/MAX Legacy and can be contacted through her website at www.galespadafora.com.